Lighting the way to improve battery safety with sensing innovations

Batteries are becoming an integral part of our daily lives, making reliability and safety essential considerations. While it is not possible to eliminate all risk, this perspective briefly discusses how recent innovations in battery diagnostics of commercial cells can transform the reliability of this energy technology. Herein, we explore how resistance sensors, as well as acoustic and optical fiber-based approaches, can be coupled with engineering developments and advanced data processing techniques to greatly benefit and enrich many critical aspects of battery safety. The challenges of implementing these operando diagnostic techniques on a large scale are discussed, as well as their potential outlook and considerations for scalability.